


you have slumber'd upon yourself

by anderfels



Series: what stranger miracles [4]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Bickering, Brothers, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Deutsch | German, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Flirting, Fluff, Holding Hands, Humor, Insecurity, Internal Conflict, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Pre-Relationship, Protective Older Brothers, Rain, Slow Burn, Touching, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, charles' many hidden talents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 15:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17490530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anderfels/pseuds/anderfels
Summary: If he had the opportunity, he’d throw Micah off the overlook without hesitation, but Charles isn’t sure he truly trusts any of them, beyond what’s necessary to live with them.Arthur, though.Isn’t he always the exception?Set during and after 'The Sheep & The Goats' and 'A Strange Kindness' in chapter 2, Charles finds out some more about Arthur as they rescue a German family





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> here we are! set during and after the mission 'the sheep and the goats' in chapter 2, charles and arthur rescue a family of germans, bicker like an old married couple, then talk about some feelings.
> 
> thank you thank you thank you for all the positive feedback so far, your comments and the fact anyone is reading this stuff means the absolute world to me ♥ if you guys ever want to talk about these cowboys (or anything else) [i'm fairly active on twitter](http://www.twitter.com/sheparrrd) at the moment!
> 
> i messed with some of the dialogue order, and did refer to _'we two together'_ a few times, but i really hope it makes sense anyway, and that you enjoy it!

_O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!_  
_You have not known what you are,_  
_You have slumber'd upon yourself all your life._

 

He plays dominoes much like he sings. Not well. But with enthusiasm. Rough and unpolished, yet still precious. Beautiful in its modesty, like the sparkles of mica in river rocks. Chin leant in his hand, a sullen frown furrowed in his brow like tills in a ploughed field, he studies each domino with a tilted head, scowling. As if it’s the dominoes’ fault for his losing streak.

Freshly trimmed hair is parted deeply on his right side, swept back by increasingly frustrated fingers when it refuses to stay where put, now just too short to compete with the cowlick of his hairline.

It falls across his forehead again as he leans to place a tile, and he huffs his breath blowing upwards, to no avail at all, only managing to make Tilly laugh across from him, Arthur’s hair ruffled by the air like a dandelion clock on the breeze.

Charles watches them play, in the warmth of the morning sun. Spring is fast blurring into summer all across New Hanover, like colours smudged together on a canvas, the artist’s brush dragged from young green to rich jade, daisy yellow to brass gold, from the forests in the west to the great stretching plains. The grass is parched on the hills and plateaus all the way to Valentine, stripped of its saturation and waiting eagerly for rain, only green still beneath the canopy of trees, the grateful cool of the shade under the ponderosa pines and sprawling sycamores.

He sits against the boulder across from the dominoes table, the geldings and wagon horses grazing behind him, picking at a hay bale he’d put out for them earlier, rich with summer sugars and bermudagrass. They rustle and mill about the small pasture between the camp and the treeline, only John’s dark war horse missing from the herd. Some business in Valentine, Charles heard.

The sound of movement makes him turn from watching Arthur and Tilly, catching Baylock ducking away from Silver Dollar’s flat ears, his threat of teeth, Baylock huffing his frustration but not challenging the older horse again. Just like his rider; trying the others’ patience. 

Micah’s reappearance at camp hadn’t helped anyone’s spirits, Arthur noticeably less cheerful since he’d returned. Their exploits in Strawberry had had Arthur gone for a good week from camp, travelling to West Elizabeth and returning with a dejected sort of tiredness Charles hadn’t seen in him since Colter. Arthur didn’t enjoy being Dutch’s attack dog, Charles was beginning to realise. And every violent encounter, every death, every punch, every simple plan that goes horribly wrong, seemed to chip away at something inside him that he wasn’t sure Arthur even knew was there.

Still. Baylock hadn’t cheered up any of the horses either, apparently. Although, the dynamics of a horse herd seem entirely less messy than the dynamics of a camp of outlaws.

He looks out at them. Outcasts. Addicts. The forgotten, the strayed, the angry. A family only in the loosest sense of the word, no more chosen than a family of blood. They were collected, and they formed a herd to survive.

If he had the opportunity, he’d throw Micah off the overlook without hesitation, but Charles isn’t sure he truly trusts any of them, beyond what’s necessary to live with them.

Arthur, though. 

Isn’t he always the exception?

Every rule Charles has had, every unbreakable truth that has kept him alive for thirty odd years, Arthur has managed to dismantle and prove them all inadequate, in just a matter of weeks.

He laughs at something Tilly says at the dominoes table, and Charles can just see the tiny scar on Arthur’s lip in his memory, stuck there since that day in the Heartlands. There’s the fair skies shadow of his stubble too, the stellar spatter of pale tan freckles across his nose and cheeks. There’s a hairline scar on Arthur’s chin, he’d noticed, a dent on the side of his nose and in the tip as well, a peppercorn sized pockmark on his cheek. Arthur’s scruffy hair, Arthur’s deep bright laugh, Arthur’s wide shoulders, hands, lips-

Close enough to see the nebula of blue that is his eyes.

It hums in his insides, that memory of Arthur. Their last hunting trip. The memory of both of them, together. Light and heavy both at once, loafing in the prairie grass with the pronghorn herds, and soaring pinions-spread above the plains - a feeling he’s beginning to suspect the name of, yet couldn’t possibly hope to clearly define. Not yet.

A hot and heady feeling, like the summer - laboured breathing in the poachers’ camp, blood-spattered and sick with adrenaline rush, hungry for the relief of each other despite the fear and sweat and newness, the unfamiliar, the invisible line in the dirt that neither could cross. Along the railroad track at the border too, four outlaws out robbing, the same pounding desire in his ears as they wait, crouched with the dogwood and the thimbleberries and the rattling sleepers, eyes on Arthur’s moonlit spotlight, a praying man before an altar to his god. 

He’d stood on the oil wagon, because of course he had, spurs bright and sharp, jeans tight across his hips and thighs, and Charles had had to remind himself to breathe, so caught in that shivering tension before the relief of the train brakes, the sight of Arthur straddling the line between spread-legged bravado and fiery death.

He should’ve kissed him. He had wanted to kiss him.

Charles huffs to himself. He’s a fool. 

The sun catches Arthur’s smile again and Charles knows it better than he knows anything else. He’s such a fool.

Tilly apparently thrashes Arthur at dominoes, Arthur protesting he can’t add up to multiples of five as fast as Tilly can, yet still smiling and dipping his head to her when he leaves the table, tipping the hat he’s not wearing, brotherly affection that’s visible whenever he’s around the girls. They’re safe with him; respected.

He crosses the short distance to Charles’ patch of grass, pointing a shy salute from where his thumbs hang in his belt loops. Charles waves back, gestures for him to sit with a nod. “Morning. Commiserations.”

“Ha. Morning.”

“We should play sometime, I’m useless at dominoes,” Charles says, and Arthur laughs, dropping to sit against the rock beside him, grateful for the relative cool of the shade.

“Somehow, Mister Smith, I don’t believe you. You’re good at everythin’.” 

Arthur smiles, lazy with summer heat despite the early hour, clinging to his face long after his laughter has gone. There’s a serenity in him that Charles had never seen before their recent time together, and still only witnesses rarely, fooled at first - as so many others are - by the hard edges and sharp corners, his snap and snarl, the apathy he wears like armoured plate. The son of Dutch. The enforcer, the heavy, the obedient bulldog gnashing its teeth behind its muzzle.

When he doesn’t have to be that man, he’s just...Arthur. And Charles is enjoying discovering who Arthur is.

Arthur lights a match on the rock behind them, and lights a cigarette, offering Charles the pack. His hands are full, as Charles gestures, so Arthur leans close and presses one to Charles’ lips himself, lighting it quickly before the match burns out, and he flicks the charred stub away. They both exhale, deep and satisfied, and breathe the other’s smoke as it drifts into nothingness.

“Another hidden talent?” Arthur asks, nodding at Charles’ hands.

“Says the man taking kids on fishing trips.”

“That ain’t a talent, I’m as poor a fisherman as I am a dominoes player,” Arthur says, and Charles reads the deflection as unwillingness to dwell too long on the sudden arrival of Pinkertons on his day out with young Jack, the restless unease with which he’d accepted Dutch’s decision not to move. “ _You_ got talents. What you making?”

Charles sets the tools he’s holding down on the grass - a camping knife, some kind of stone chisel with a bone handle, and a small hoof rasp. In his other hand, a brown black horn. He takes a drag of his cigarette with his now free hand, and holds the horn out to Arthur with the other, voice fond, “Ain’t so hidden if I show you.”

“Is this… The bison we-”

“Mhm. Horn is...interesting to carve. I’m more used to wood. Like that bow I gave you. But horn and bone make good carvings too.”

Arthur rolls the horn between his fingers, thumbs over the roughly-hewn outline of the shape Charles is pulling from inside it, the keratin jagged and uneven in the places where the bulk of it has been filed away. “I didn’t realise you _made_ that bow,” he mumbles softly, distracted by the ribs and bands of colour under his fingers. There’s a figure emerging from the dark shape, curved and pointed like the horn itself, but Arthur can’t quite tell what it is just yet.

He lets ash fall from his cigarette, and tilts his head slightly as he looks at Charles, bird-like, with an openness that makes even Charles, usually so straightforward and assured, feel clumsy, graceless as a moth in torchlight. Arthur shakes his head at him, chuckles as he takes a drag, and the smoke flits and swirls with the rhythm of his laughter.

“Gonna call me an enigma again?” Charles asks, raising an eyebrow at him, but there’s only fondness in his voice, having to look away from Arthur’s gaze lest he start to blush, reimagine what it would feel like to have Arthur’s lips on his, get trapped again in his eyes. In his panting after killing the poacher and after the train robbery, in how he’d cocked his revolver at the very first insult directed at Charles, how he’d stared at the blood covering Charles as though he wanted to lick it off.

Fuck he’s a fool.

“Nah,” Arthur says, and Charles can’t help but glance at the cigarette he brings to his mouth, draws on like it’s ambrosia. “S’Too long a word for too early a mornin’.” Smoke seeps around his lips, coating every syllable in his low voice. “I already done addin’ sums of five, words don’t come til 10 at least.”

Charles laughs, and takes back the horn, inspecting it himself, ready to start carving again and hopefully stop staring at Arthur’s lips. He rests back against the rock, cool where his hair is tied in a tight bun off his neck, and smokes, alternates chiselling small slivers of horn with letting ash crumble from his cigarette to the ground beside him, refining the rough shape he’s already made and teasing out more detail. Arthur watches for a while, tangled up in Charles’ fingers, til his cigarette is burnt out and then after too, content to enjoy a moment of quiet together, listening to the morning music of the camp and the forest surrounding.

There’s hoofbeats on the track a short time later, and Lenny calls out to the rider from his guard post near the treeline. Satisfied with whatever answer he gets, he lets the mare pass, and Arthur recognises old Nell (the Second), her bald face easily noticeable as she trots through the trees.

Uncle calls Arthur’s name as they approach the hitching posts near Hosea’s lean-to, where Magpie and Taima are grazing with the other mares, and Arthur groans, briefly toys with the idea of running, until Uncle spots him. He stumbles out of the saddle, leaving Nell standing in the middle of nowhere, and hurries towards them with all the grace and poise of a puppet with half its strings cut. An unmade bed of a man squeezed into a thin union suit and jeans, fat belly and skinny legs, giving his body the uneven consistency of a cheap mattress.

He calls Arthur’s name again, flapping towards them, out of breath and rough with a night of drinking, and Arthur sighs, ignoring Charles’ silent smirking beside him. “What you want?” he asks, and then as Uncle finally gets close enough, “You stink.”

“Now is that a-any way to talk to your oldest- And...and _dearest_ uncle?”

“You ain’t my uncle- Was you out all night?” Scowling, Arthur looks like a parent scolding a child. “How are you just gettin’ in _now_ , sun’s been up for hours!”

Uncle flaps, clicks his tongue. “Just ‘cause you boys is...content to sit around all day-” He gestures clumsily at Arthur and Charles, and the hot smell of old booze and older sweat moves with him. Charles snorts, and the two of them share a look like schoolboys accused of breaking rules together. “Don’t mean we all are! Y’all lazy...kids. Some of us have...have important work! Needs doing.”

“Work as in pissing up the wall outside Smithfields all night, sure,” Arthur says, and Uncle balks again, in slow motion with how drunk he still is, offended like a dog denied his owner’s food. Without looking, Arthur can somehow see Charles’ bitten-back smirk.

“Work as in work!” Uncle snaps. “With occasional...breaks for pleasure! You’s a s-sad man, Arthur Morgan, never heard of pleasure. You oughta stay away from this one, Charles, he’ll bring you down. He’s a sad-”

“I’m fuckin’ miserable now you’re here,” Arthur snaps back, “Just tell me what you want.”

“Oh real charming,” Uncle says, hanging his head slightly, Charles idly watching Nell wander over to the other mares since she has nothing better to do, her reins hanging loosely off her saddle horn. “I saw John in V-Valentine. He wants you to meet him by the uh… At the auction yard! This mornin’. I’d’ve gone myself _of course_ but as I was s-sayin’, I says ‘John, I got so much work of my own, an’ you know with my lumb-’”

“Don’t even say it. Git gone, old man. I got it,” Arthur says, then softer, “Sleep it off.”

Uncle grumbles some more, waving his hands dismissively as he shambles back across the camp, dropping into an elaborately awful bow when Miss Grimshaw bustles past him. She bustles away just as fast.

Arthur deflates, letting his head fall gently back against the rock behind them. “No rest for the wicked,” Charles says quietly, watching Arthur’s hand come to rest on the grass between them, wondering if he could pass it off as a joke if he reached for it and took it in his own. Would Arthur let him? Had he thought about it too? Was the desire Charles saw in him that evening on the plains really there, or had Charles simply imagined it in place of adrenaline? In place of shared anger?

“Ah well,” Arthur says, and touches Charles’ shoulder as he stands up. It’s only a small gesture, but Charles can count the number of times Arthur has touched him with one hand, and it still makes his heart flicker like a newly lit flame, tentative but growing fast. “Back to it, huh.”

He brushes his hair back with his hand, and it falls immediately over his forehead again, the colour of hay bales dotting a tawny sun-parched field. Charles looks up at him from the ground, his crooked nose and shabby blue shirt, thin from wear, jeans patched at the knees, talkative bashful hands with bitten nails, and somehow Arthur _shines_ , the splendid summer sun against the backdrop of the humble campsite, against the pastoral and provincial, like a mariposa lily in a cluster of chaparral grass, or a jewelled button on a beggar’s coat.

Arthur smiles thinly, only a mechanical imitation of a true show of happiness. “Want me to come with you?” Charles asks, but Arthur shakes his head, thumbs his belt loops.

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Enjoy your mornin’. John’s just casin’ for a job.” 

Chewing his bottom lip for a second, Arthur looks out over the cliff to the west, where the land falls away into jagged ripped cliffs and rock formations, lined with grass and sugar pine, and clinging cedars like unevenly shaven cheeks. “One big score then we can get back on track, y’know?” he says, his tone of voice a certificate of trust that Charles treasures, weary and unconvincing. Honest.

Reluctantly, Charles nods, looking down at his carving for a moment, the rough edges and filed curves. “Ride safe,” he says, and watches Arthur cross the camp with a two-fingered goodbye salute, heading to the hitching posts to ready Magpie for the day ahead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not gonna shoot just for the sake of it,” he grumbles, eyeing the battered brown jacket harrying its way across the empty creek, Arthur kicking through the muddy puddles.
> 
> “Survival’s for the sake of it,” Arthur snaps back.

_The mockeries are not you,_  
_Underneath them and within them I see you lurk_  
_I pursue you where none else has pursued you_

 

It is chaos.

Noon drifts closer in a herd of sheep like trotting clouds, a sniper rifle’s snap into his shoulder, a hyena-grinning man with an ugly moustache who was one sarcastic quip away from getting a black eye to match his terrible facial hair. Then, the promise of a drink, and all Hell falls on Valentine like a cow shits on mud.

It’s a miracle they make it out at all. Arthur’s boots are skidding in the muck as he hauls a wailing Strauss onto John’s horse. His shirt sleeve is torn and drenched in blood, his own for the most part, eyes wild, spattered head to toe with mud like bullet holes in the side of a building. Dutch and John escape first.

He covers them as best he can, some more dead law, more gunpowder on his hands, but there’s wisdom in knowing when to run.

Magpie screams as Arthur spurs her into a sprint, and red erupts from her neck, a bullet missing Arthur’s hip and scouring across her skin. She bucks, kicks out and her front leg crumples, and Arthur clamps his hand over the gash as he fights for his balance, clinging over her crest to keep from falling as she rights her legs and bolts.

They flee in a torrent of kicked mud and snorting breath, and peel west down into the Dakota valley, a slew of rubble and dust down the sloping cliffs and out across the river, spooking a herd of whitetail and flocks of flapping ducks barely missing Magpie’s hooves. Arthur only shoulders his repeater when they reach the bend beneath Riggs Station, panting and sore, but finally certain he hasn’t been followed.

In the shadow under Bard’s Crossing, he washes Magpie’s wound with the clear river water, and is thankful it’s just a graze, not deep or wide, stroking her neck until the wildness in her eyes is gone. He soothes it with the pot of ointment in her saddlebags, lets her pull anxiously at the sparse grass and rushes between the river rocks while he chews on some of the pemmican he and Charles had made a few weeks before.

Charles was right, he hadn’t tasted anything like it before. Savoury and sweet at once. But it’s filling. Easy.

He washes the mud from his face and hands, replaces his hat from where it’s steadfastly secured to Magpie’s saddle, with only a few more scratches and dents in the leather than when he set out that morning, and heads back to Horseshoe Overlook with the enthusiasm of a kicked dog, looping beneath the bridge and up past Flatneck Station, approaching the camp from the south. 

There’s no guard posted. Everyone is rushing, packing wagons, loading supplies into crates and harnessing the heavy horses, Miss Grimshaw’s lips pursed so tightly they’re nothing but one pressed line. The Reverend is fussing over an ashen Mr Strauss, Bill yelling something at poor Kieran as he struggles carrying two saddles at once, one on each hip. Abigail’s voice is lilting and low, thumbs stroking over Jack’s cheeks as she hugs him close.

It’s chaos, again, and Arthur has no energy to concentrate on any of it, just noise, ringing in his ears like marbles dropped on a sheet of tin. It grates at his periphery, yet seems muffled also, as if everything’s happening through a veil, voices heard through scrunched handkerchiefs.

“So, we keep heading east. Is that the plan?” Hosea’s voice is taut, irritated. Arthur rounds reluctantly on Dutch’s tent, leans heavy and defeated on the main pole, only now noticing the pain in his arm, the shock of blood from another near-miss bullet.

“For now.”

“And when do we stop?” Hosea throws his hands in the air, slamming them down on his knees. “When we reach Paris?!”

“Oh that’d be nice,” Dutch says, dripping with sarcasm. “Join the Commune?” He scoffs, moustache bristling, looks to Arthur as if for support, and finds none. “We stop when we find some place _sensible_. Shake them that’s followin’ us and lie _low_.”

Hosea then glances up at Arthur, weary, lines in his face like crinkled tissue. “This is lying low? We’ve turned into a bunch of killers!” Dutch grumbles, but Hosea snaps, “I mean it!”, staring him down for one stretched second, buzzing with a ferocity reserved only for old battleworn carnivores. The survivors of the species; vicious, but only showing their teeth when they have to.

He rubs at his face, and deflates. “We ain’t even got the delusion of bein’ anythin’ but a bunch of killers.”

It’s true, Arthur reckons. He’s just a murderer in a more eloquent hat, nothing romantic or philosophical about it. Just a killer. And the noose around his neck is tightening.

“We are just trying to _survive_ , Hosea.” Dutch’s voice drops low. Storm clouds. “We don’t have a choice.”

Not for the first time, Arthur doesn’t believe a word Dutch says.

“So...we movin’?” he says eventually, to break the tension, resisting the urge in his gut to say ‘I told you so’. They should’ve moved as soon as the Pinkertons showed their overstuffed faces, bragging about killing poor Mac in front of him and Jack.

“Yeah,” Dutch says, and watches Hosea creak upright, like a king observes his kingdom’s beggars, contemplating whether to throw pennies at their feet. “This’ll end soon.”

Hosea snarls, “Damn right it will!”, finger pointed like a gun barrel at Dutch, fierce despite how he slowly shuffles past Arthur, hunched over like an oddly bent hairpin. 

“Constipated as usual.”

Arthur pats Hosea’s shoulder as he leaves, a wordless show of affection, and then Dutch addresses him, fishing for the map he has rolled beside him on his cot. “Micah told me of a place to lie low. Look here…”

He looks at the proffered map, nose wrinkled at the mere mention of Micah. Like his name carries a bad smell. It’s a looping thread cut across the border with Lemoyne, pockets of water, the partly-healed scar of a river. “Dewberry Creek, he said.”

“Sure,” Arthur says, sighs with his whole body, as if he can exhale the raw impatience rasping inside him. Words still seem distant. There’s gunfire in his ears.

“Maybe you and Charles can go take a look,” Dutch says, as if it’ll be the easiest thing in the world. As if it’s some kind of weekend getaway they’re looking forward to and not a life-or-death escape plan that risks all their lives. “Clear off anyone you find before the whole lot of us move in...lookin’ so conspicuous.”

Arthur looks out into the camp, at his scurrying herd. Then back at Dutch. “And _how_ we gonna do that?”

“I don’t know.” Arthur blinks at Dutch’s blank face. “Start dancing?”

It’s such a ridiculous thing to say, Arthur isn’t sure Dutch is being serious, searching the tent for someone to help back him up. There’s no one, and Arthur snorts, growling with frustration. “Great,” he snaps, tossing his hand in the air. “Looks like I’ve turned into the goddamn errand boy.”

“You have turned into _my son_!” Dutch stands to follow him as he leaves the tent, and Arthur clenches his teeth before glancing back at him, refusing to stop completely. “You worry ‘cause I worry. We are just the same!”

Arthur stalks past John’s tent, via his own half-packed wagon to grab a jacket for the ride, and grumbles too quiet for anyone else to hear, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

The camp is thrumming like a termite mound, busy and swarming, needling at him like a thousand tiny teeth. Air seems hard to breathe, and Arthur looks uselessly up at the sky, the scud of high clouds blown by an increasing wind. So bright and fair that morning, and yet a few hours had strewn clouds above the valley, congregating in fast-greying clumps, like blooming bruises on the horizon. Rain.

“Charles,” Arthur says, and is barely comforted at all by Charles’ dark eyes snapping to him from where he’s packing up one of the wagons. He hops down from the wheel hub, frowning at Arthur’s torn and bloody sleeve before he pulls on his jacket, hiding it from view.

“You okay?”

“Come with me. We got work to do.”

Charles watches Arthur for a moment before following, and watches him still as Arthur comforts Magpie before mounting, loving hand rubbing her shoulder where blood still stains her white coat, dried like rust on iron. The cut isn’t deep, and hasn’t bled any more, but Arthur frowns still as he picks up his reins, Magpie fidgeting in place, flicking her tail. “Where’ve I heard that before,” Charles says quietly, scritching Taima’s cheek as he checks over her bridle, and mounts up soon after.

Magpie is stiff as she stutters into trot, and Charles notes Arthur doesn’t look back to see if he’s following at all, Magpie’s white tail swishing through the buttercups and bracken.

They ride in silence for some time, the high sun hot and unwelcome, humidity rising with the swirling clouds. The horses jog in single file, Taima a steady presence behind, and Magpie unsettled, skittish, eyes wide and darting behind her white lashes, still upset. Charles follows Arthur out towards the plains, south-easterly, where rain is lurking, ominous and dark.

“So where we going?” he asks, a toe dipped into a bathtub to test the temperature of the water.

“Gotta find a new spot to camp,” Arthur answers, voice flat. “Packing up and movin’ on.”

“Again?”

“We have to. Fast.”

The horses cross the railroad tracks, Magpie’s hooves unsteady on the sleepers, clanking on the metal rails. Arthur pats her neck absently, encourages her on, reluctantly pushing her faster. Charles hurries Taima alongside her as they spill up onto the wide prairie together, the sky endless in every direction. Twin Stack Pass guards the east, but Arthur doesn’t follow the road towards it.

“Sounded bad in Valentine,” Charles says, keeping his voice neutral, catching the agitated twitch in Arthur’s lip. For a second, he doesn’t think Arthur’s going to answer.

“Mhm. We’d already pushed it too far.” He tucks his chin into his jacket collar for a second, frowning out over the parched plains. “Killed a lotta law. Lot of Cornwall’s men.”

Sighing, Charles shakes his head, just a tiny movement. The Pinkertons had already known they were there. Cornwall now knows too, and the world seems somehow smaller than it was that morning. As if the infinite landscape has an end, an unseen ravine opening up before them.

“Glad everyone got out.”

“Mm.”

Arthur rubs Magpie’s shoulder again, apologetic. The anxiety in him is tangible, held awkwardly in his posture, the white in his knuckles, the repetitive flicking of his thumb, picking at a loose stitch in Magpie’s reins. He doesn’t look at Charles, gaze fixated on the massing grey on the horizon, ravening burial clouds swallowing the midday sky.

It takes a few asks, but Magpie eventually stutters into a lope, covering the yellow plains. Taima happily follows, every grass and plant crunching beneath their hooves, brushing against their legs with the sound of dry tinder. The rain will surely do the land some good, but the sourness in Arthur’s expression doesn’t alter as they ride, his entire outlook more grim than the darkening clouds.

Again, Charles tries to draw him into conversation. “So we’re heading...south?” 

“Yeah.” The sigh says more than Arthur does. “Area called Dewberry Creek. Dutch wants…” Glancing upwards, Arthur waves a hand, exhaling long and noisy. “Dutch wants.”

The cornered sun guards their retreat, and Arthur is visibly caught in the middle, blood and death behind and a coming storm ahead, and ever eastward, further and further from the wild land they’d left in the west, where the mesas are temples to the eagles, and the mountains thrones to the wolves and lions. Savagery and solitude.

Torn between two worlds. Just an actor in between scene changes, wearing every costume at once, and never knowing which role he’s playing from one line to the next.

Charles wonders if perhaps they should just keep riding. Pick a direction and not look back. Find that serenity in Arthur’s smile again, no matter how far west he left it behind.

“Just gonna… See if it’s clear. And a good place to lie low for a while.” 

“Hm,” Charles grunts, unconvinced. “I’ve only known him a few months but… The way he talks? Didn’t think I’d see Dutch wanting to head south.

“Right,” Arthur says, resigned to something, clouding in his expression like ink in water, brow heavy. “And I know by now, there ain’t no ‘lyin’ low’.”

“Too many of us for that.”

“And there ain’t no way Dutch is gonna just...hide away in a cave somewhere,” Arthur says, punctuating with his hand again. “Goes against everythin’ he stands for.” 

“Doesn’t seem like him,” Charles agrees, conversational only to keep Arthur talking, stop the storm in his frown from swallowing him whole.

“It’d be...admitting we’re nothin’ more than low-down _criminals_.”

“Which…we are.”

Arthur huffs humourless laughter, barren and unpleasant. “You don’t gotta tell me.”

Magpie skips along the banks of the ancient creek they’d seen on the prairie weeks before, heading in the other direction. Pebbles scatter beneath her hooves into its dry bowels as they skirt along its length for several miles, up into the crags and cliffs. He’d sketched the oil derrick in the centre when they’d first arrived in the Heartlands, fascinated by the bent black skeleton, drooping to one side like a flower in frost, ravens perching on its rusting ribs. Now as they ride past, it just looks ugly.

They start to climb, rustling through the dry grass, yucca sharp against the horses’ hooves. From a height the prairie is as beautiful as always, a patchwork of browns and golds, stitched together with cacti and thorny shrubs. Wildflowers have wilted away from the sun, the only colour the copper backs of pronghorns, scattering from the horses and the threat of coming rain. 

The rise eventually spills out over itself, and Flat Iron Lake is bright glass in the far distance, many miles down. On a clear day it’d be a stunning sight, white water bracketed by the swell and surge of the Mexican mountains further still, islands of rich trees and the pastel shapes of wading birds. Instead, rain hangs like mist across the land’s border with the sky, a grey sheet of directionless fog, brush strokes in watercolour, pulling the paint and distorting the picture beyond easy recognition. The dark forests of Lemoyne loom over the lake, like blurred paints on an artist’s palette, oily and shapeless, and the lake itself is dull and grey, no distinction between water and far-off rain. What little sun there is still shining hits the clouds and bounces, bright rays caught in the distant storm, making it look like the sky itself is moving, writhing in on itself like a swarm of insects.

“So where does it end?”

“Where does what end?”

“The moving, the running.” Charles gestures between them, and Arthur looks across at him, for the first time on the whole ride. His face is tight, impassable.

“Dutch don’t...see it as runnin’.”

“He can call it what he wants,” Charles says, voice harder than he’d intended. Arthur looks away again, and the sky seems to darken further with him, the last of the sunlight eclipsed. “I ain’t asking him,” he adds, softer. “I’m asking you.”

It takes a moment, but Arthur sighs, setting his jaw. “I don’t know,” he says, like the words are too big for his mouth and struggling to get out, like it’s difficult just to admit it. He frowns out across the landscape again. “Before, put enough time or distance between you an’ the problem, eventually it went away. But now… I don’t know.”

The first drops of rain start to fall as they ride across the last ridge in the prairie, and every colour seems to brighten as a result, plateaus and far off floodplains washed with new paint, the parched plains blending into vibrant grassy lowlands, willow trees and azalea. Rich green carpets the land ahead, broken by a thick swathe of rock and drooping rushes at the lowest point - all that’s left of a meandering river, dried into the earth long ago.

“Must be it,” Arthur says, and they ride on together in silence for the remaining miles, downhill along ridges and cliffs, soon leaving the Heartlands far behind, marching on into the rain.

The creek is nothing but a long, miserable trench, full of sediment and river rats. Despite the banks of bullrushes and shrubbery on either side, and the deep curves like dark dead-end paths in a maze, it’s open, completely indefensible, and the least attractive place for a camp Arthur could imagine. Even without the rats.

Rain falls steadily as they ride along its border, getting closer as the afternoon ticks by, water dripping from the brim of Arthur’s hat like a leaking faucet, the ground becoming spongy and muddy beneath the horses’ hooves. The arid plants of the plains have long been replaced by young ferns and berry bushes, tangles of milkweed between the river rocks. Moss clings to everything, and the grass is greener than either of them have seen in weeks.

“Looks very open,” Charles says as they reach what looks like the widest part of the creek, set deeper between the dark banks, inlaid like faded embroidery on a green coat. Arthur hums his agreement, and guides Magpie down further, her hooves slipping on the loose rocks, the wet dirt.

“Ain’t gonna be the best in this rain neither.”

The mares splash down the sandy bank, rainwater making the dirt stream in thick brown rivers, pooling in the recesses where the ground isn’t level and running together, miniature creeks that splatter mud the colour of dishwater as high as their elbows. 

“Well…” Arthur sighs, looking out into the barren creekbed, at the busy muskrats hopping from one side to the other. A glorified ditch, if he’s honest. “Let’s take a look around.”

Taima follows behind, peeling away from Magpie as Charles checks the opposite bank to Arthur, hooves sloshing through the watery silt. The mud has carved tracks in the soft ground, presumably all the way down into the lake, creating islands and archipelagos of wet sand between the shallow puddles, like a tiny topographical map all of itself, a reflection of the wider landmass around it. Like a painting within a painting.

It’s hot still, despite the rain, which seems to lessen slightly as they search along the creek, leaving steam in the air, soupy and thick, like riding through molasses. Taima pulls ahead, scouring the south bank, until Charles halts her, tamping the earth with an impatient hoof. “Hey,” he calls back, and Arthur looks up from shaking raindrops off his hat. He sets it back on his head, and gently kicks Magpie onwards. “I see something over there. Someone on the ground.”

Three vultures squawk and jump as the mares draw close, reluctantly taking off, Charles dismounting and trudging through the mud, water dripping steadily from his tied hair down his back. A pallid corpse is curled up there, hands loosely clenched, as if the shifting silt were just a mattress, and he was simply fast asleep. The crater where his breastbone once was puts a festering end to that theory.

“Trouble got here before us,” Arthur says, voice low and tight. “Shit.”

“Hm.” Charles crouches beside the dead man, inspecting his chest wound. Then, scanning the rest of the trench further on. “Looks like a camp ahead,” he says, straightening up.

Huffing, Arthur checks his revolver is loaded, replacing it in its holster with a weary scowl as he too dismounts. “Get ready for business.” His shotgun is holstered too, and he takes the lead, sandy run-off splashing on the corpse as he passes. “Any issues, shoot first. Debate second.”

The look Charles gives him is equal parts disbelief and disgust, one eyebrow pulled up as he stares at the retreating rear of Arthur’s head, not even looking back to see Charles’ contempt. Each footstep is like a shovel slapping wet mud, heavy and deliberate, and Charles stalks to catch up, refusing to let Arthur walk away from what he’d said without a retort.

“I’m not gonna shoot just for the sake of it,” he grumbles, eyeing the battered brown jacket harrying its way across the empty creek, Arthur kicking through the muddy puddles.

“ _Survival’s_ for the sake of it,” Arthur snaps back. Facing Charles for just a second, Arthur glares at him, impatient anger loaded across his shoulders, spreading through his body like fever. “Quit talkin’.”

He walks away again, movements quick and jerking with annoyance, pulled tight like a bowstring. Charles watches, both eyebrows raised. Only follows after he takes a breath and decides escalating won’t help. Still, he growls between his teeth back at Arthur, a jab just loud enough to hear, “You started it.”

The rain restarts as Charles nears the camp he’d spotted. Fat droplets smack the silt and sand, drip steadily from the corners of several simple tents, clustered along another smaller trench, a branching tributary of the main river. Tent poles slip in the shifting mud, half-sunken, weighed down with wet canvas and leaking oilcloth, like ships taking on water. Sacks of grain lie split and mouldering, innards trodden into the ground, and people’s belongings are strewn forgotten, spread amongst wagon parts and broken wheels.

It gives the campsite the feeling of a graveyard, an abandoned museum to whoever had sheltered there, and obviously left in a hurry.

“Looks empty,” Arthur says, and his voice has the quality of nails on a chalkboard, forced and jarring. If it’s some kind of apology, Charles doesn’t accept it, concentrating on the remains of the camp, sawn-off in its holster, just beneath his ready hand. He picks through each tent, prodding half-full crates with his boots.

“Where is everybody…”

Arthur grunts, studying an open can of peaches. “Coulda heard us comin’.” He sets the can down, and his voice is harsh, warning, “Be careful.” 

It only earns him another _look_ , Charles’ brows raised together as he glances at Arthur, lips pursed. His eyes narrow, like he’s gauging the potential danger of an unknown animal, trying to work out from where Arthur’s tone is coming. “I am being _‘careful’_ ,” he snaps, indignant, meeting the flash of anger in Arthur’s eyes with equal ferocity of his own.

Tension stretches between them for just a second, but feels much longer, jagged and unpleasant, like walking on broken glass. The rain spatters quietly in the silence, ignoring their bickering.

Arthur turns first. His nostrils flare like a snorting colt. 

Ducking into the last tent in the huddle, his fingers worry the butt of his revolver, ready to grab. Charles watches him, and wipes the rain from his face, pushing wet strands of hair back from where they’re clinging to his forehead.

The campsite isn’t empty. He knows it. “Someone’s been here.”

He scans the remaining space, heads deeper down the trench. One partly packed wagon is mired at the entrance to the creek, beneath a sodden overhang of cottonwood and willow branches, heavy with water, blockaded with crates and barrels, like a low stone wall protecting the entrance to the castle. Charles tilts his head, listens.

Behind him, Arthur huffs as he exits the tent, knocks his toe into an empty bucket, sending it smacking wetly into the mud.

“Someone’s still here.”

“Ain’t no one here,” he mutters, childish, voice creating the same feeling as seeing someone roll their eyes. Exasperation, and the strong urge to kick him in the shin, in Charles’ case. He brushes past to inspect the wagon himself, as if Charles was simply doing it wrong, roughly pulling aside some planks of wood, a misshapen board wedged behind some of the crates, and only then he hesitates, hearing something over the sound of the rain.

They glance at each other. Charles marches up, and each then pull a crate from the makeshift barricade, dismantling the low wall shielding the wagon.

They’re met by the twin barrels of a loaded shotgun. “Whoa…”

A woman is crouched behind the remaining crates, the hem of her dress thick with mud, two children clinging to her sides. They’re white with fear, shaking as they pull at their mother’s skirt, twisting the thin fabric in their hands. Arthur retreats, hands up, face slack in shock, the first expression he’s shown in hours that isn’t anger or its cousins.

The shotgun trembles with how hard the woman is holding it, pointed between Charles and Arthur and then back, her cheeks red and blotchy from poorly-hidden tears. She takes a breath as if she’s sure it’ll be her last, staring up at them like a rabbit at the mercy of every beast with teeth.

“It’s okay,” Charles says, soft and low, hands out in surrender. Then, more sure of himself, “It’s okay.”

Arthur looks at him, then back at the terrified woman, her eyes wide and wild, reckless with the unbreakable instinct to protect her children, at any cost. “You can come out,” Charles tries again, gestures gently towards himself, showing his empty hands.

His hair is plastered flat and opaque in the rain, the blackest ink. Distracted, Arthur again imagines tangling his fingers at the back of Charles’ head, pulling out the band and seeing it pool around his shoulders, dragging Charles in. Kissing him like he should have before. Before...this. Another mess.

Anger coils in him, reared up like a cobra. And when he looks at Charles, at his kind eyes, his hands outstretched in offering towards an armed stranger, guilt rests there too, bitter and burning. Bile at the back of his throat.

His lips twitch. Restless. Hooves pawing the dirt.

He flicks the hammer of his revolver with his thumbnail, over and over.

“Are you okay?” Charles speaks again, and backs up immediately, the shotgun aimed squarely at his head, mumbling, “We don’t mean you no harm.”

The woman only stares at them, as if she’s heard nothing Charles has said, and only when Charles takes another step back does she move at all, still brandishing the shotgun like a knife as she pushes out from behind the crate. Wobbling to her feet, she collects her cowering children behind her skirt, panting hard.

“He uh…” Arthur clears the stop from his throat. “He said, are you okay?”

“Sprechen sie Deutsch?” the woman asks, desperate. “Ah… G-German?”

Starting to frown, Arthur shakes his head. She truly hadn’t heard anything Charles said. “No,” he says blankly, and clenches his teeth, exhaling impatience. He gestures away, in the vague direction of the main creek. “No German. Now go on. Get outta here. All of you.”

The shotgun is pointed again as he lowers his surrendering hands, and shoos her like she’s an unwelcome housefly. His voice rises. “Go. We need the land. _Go_!”

“ _Arthur._ ”

“Get the hell outta here!”

“They took our father!”

Fists closed in her mother’s dress, one of the children cries out in heavily accented English, face wet from the rain and tears both. Her pigtails are soaking, the colour of straw.

Arthur makes a noise like the warning snarl before a dog bite, throwing his hands up, unable to care about the shotgun trained on him, the way the little girl cowers when he moves, as if afraid she’ll be hit. Charles bristles, unsure whether he wants to calm Arthur down or shoot him himself.

“They took your father? Who did?” he asks, quiet but crackling, massing clouds before lightning, ignoring the hulking clap of thunder beside him, Arthur rounding on him like he’s just suggested they boil the children and eat them. When he can’t find Charles’ gaze to protest, he kicks at one of the planks that had barricaded the family beneath the wagon, sending it cartwheeling into the mud, the children flinching behind their mother. Only the girl peeks out again. 

“M-Men,” she whispers, with a bravery only children have, when they have no true concept of death or mortality. “Night. At night.”

“Last night? ...Where?” Charles asks, gentler than he has any right to be, crouching in the mud. “Where did they take him?” Arthur gapes at him as the child points to the south.

“Ain’t no business of ours!” he barks, voice flaring, unrestrained disbelief. “I don’t even speak their language!”

Excruciatingly slowly, Charles looks at him, drawing himself up to his full height from where he’d stooped to talk to the girl. They meet eye to eye, like tom cats circling in a gutter, hackles raised and spitting.

It’s a mirror image of the evening on the plains yet the picture is distorted, as if the glass has shattered and been poorly repaired, pieces glued back together in the wrong order. The rain becomes white noise, background static, the fuzzy edges of a phonograph recording, and for several long seconds there’s nothing but each other’s furious eyes, the desperate anger in Arthur elbowing its way between them. 

He’s a cornered dog. The violent helplessness of an animal caught in a bear trap, suffocating between its only choices - slow agonising death, or gnawing through its own leg in the attempt to free itself.

Charles brandishes one finger, voice low. “You ain’t as tough and dense as all that,” he snaps, violating Arthur’s space, lips curled back over his teeth. He stares Arthur down, then turns, traipsing away through the mud. “Come on.”

The horses jog over as Charles whistles, Magpie following Taima as she often does. Both of them are drenched, coats muddy and steaming in the humidity. With one last glance at the huddled family, his mouth slack open, Arthur finally shakes his head and curses as colourfully as he can muster, stomping after Charles like a toddler having a tantrum. Water is already dripping down his neck despite his jacket, soaking through his jeans, clinging uncomfortably to his skin as he mounts Magpie, and tails Charles up out of the creek.

Tracks are soon found in the dirt, baked into the ground the previous day and thankfully not yet washed away by the rain. Taima hugs the trail Charles picks up, Arthur like a stray dog with nowhere else to go, following behind.

“Don’t see nothin’,” he grunts, only seeing dirt. And look! More dirt.

“Hoof marks,” Charles snaps, whip-quick. “This way.”

The rain drones on as they ride, south from the creek, ambling through thick floodplains of grass and ferns. Dried up a long time ago, same as the river, and struggling to drain in the downpour after too many weeks of drought. Grass has reclaimed the dark soil, emerald in the rain, and the horses splash through shallow pools in the undergrowth as they jog, the only animals for what seems like miles. Even the sky is empty of life, swirling and sad.

Trying to keep rhythm behind Charles’ variable pace as he tracks does nothing for Arthur’s mood. He picks at his reins, the landscape nothing but a blur of grey and green ahead, hoofbeats and humid rain. 

They’re wasting _time_. Running around the county chasing missing Germans, who may or may not even exist at all, was not ‘lying low’. Pinkertons were on their heels, Cornwall’s private army too, and so far from the others, Arthur can’t help but feel like he’s failing them. Like the longer they linger, without somewhere safe for the rest of the gang, the more they’re in danger.

It’s tight around his throat. Choking.

He shivers, and turns his jacket collar up, soaked through. The black shock of Charles’ hair distracts him again, hanging dripping from Charles’ shoulder as he leans deep over Taima’s flank, finding patterns in the grass and churned soil. Without a hat or a coat, he must be even more drenched than Arthur is. And yet he’s still intent on trekking halfway through Lemoyne for some stranger they don’t even know, without a description, without any likelihood of success whatsoever.

As Arthur watches, Charles straightens up, shirt dark with the weight of water, shoulders held stiff as if to brace him against the rain. He glances behind, and Arthur averts his gaze again, eyes in Magpie’s mane.

“What’s going on with you?” Charles asks, letting Taima drop back so he doesn’t have to shout over the rain. His voice has lost its harshness, frowning as he tries to catch Arthur’s eye, offering him an out. An escape.

“What you mean?” Arthur grunts, face fixed ahead, expression like his features are being held in a vice, thumb mechanical, picking the same stitch, over and over.

Charles tries again. “You were just gonna send that woman and her children on their way. Like you didn’t care at all.”

“We’re _wanted men_ ,” Arthur says, slow and sarcastic, as if Charles might understand better if he drags out each syllable, the same patronising over-exaggeration as he might attempt to explain a topic to someone who doesn’t speak his language. “We got Pinkertons breathin’ down our necks. Law. _Cornwall_.” 

It only makes Charles narrow his eyes, glaring sidelong at Arthur as they ride together. “We should be movin’ camp, gettin’ everyone safe, not...runnin’ off on some...wild goose chase!”

“Come on, Arthur,” Charles says, growling, searching what he can see of Arthur’s face. His lip is twitching again, nose pink from the cold rain, dark shadow over his eyes from his hat. There’s tension wound tight in every inch of him, bristling with a rising, warning fury that any wise man would see and know to immediately back off, like an animal salivating ready to bite. His hands too high on Magpie’s bit, she’s skipping unsettled under the saddle, able to feel the stress in his muscles, the perpetual flicking of his thumb. “That’s not how you are.”

Charles voice softens again. It’s certain, a concrete, firm belief in his words. There’s no doubt there, yet it’s still tinged with something that makes it sound pleading, begging Arthur to talk to him. Look at him. That’s not how Arthur is. It’s not Arthur’s true nature. He knows Arthur better.

Arthur doesn’t look. He lunges, and bites.

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” he says, colourless as the rain.

It hits Charles like a knife in the gut. A blunt knife. He stares at Arthur, stricken for a long moment before he ropes in his expression, collects up the reins, sets his jaw tight, clenches his teeth. Keeps riding.

His body feels exposed. As if Arthur’s cut through the hide and peeled it from his flesh, sawing with a serrated, grating blade until his skin is raw and tattered at the edges like fraying cloth. Muscle and tissue is bared, stung by every raindrop, and he’s hyper-aware of how droplets cling to his eyelashes, tickle the end of his nose, drip down his back.

It settles in his chest cavity, gnawing. Like insects at an overripe peach, pulling at the skin, bleeding thick and sickly.

“Charles…”

Arthur is finally looking at him. He can see in his periphery as he glances across. Filled to the neck with sloshing anger like a carafe with bad wine, fury and frustration only stoppered by those eyes, creased and panicked, knowing he’s pushed too hard. Drawn blood when he should have only growled.

“Don’t,” Charles says, and drops his gaze.

Taima kicks into a slow lope and takes the lead, splashing through puddles that have formed on the roads, following the path Charles picks out. He leads her south west, wandering across the meadows and grassland, dipping and rising in gentle swells, skirting around woods and lone trees. As the afternoon wears on, the rain persists, and Flat Iron Lake is barely visible even as they draw closer, the same dreary colour as the sky, so that it blurs together in one grey smudge.

It’s some miles following the trail, but Charles barely notices the distance, lost in swampy hoofprints, disturbed brush, flattened grass, distinct from the short cloves of deer, the scratched angles of turkey tracks. Arthur’s words sit uncomfortable between his lungs throughout, caught behind his breastbone. He wipes rain from his face periodically, head tilted down against the storm, still reading the ground by Taima’s flanks.

Arthur is...frustrated, clearly. He has the look of a wild animal caught in a snare, who snaps at the hand that tries to free him, hissing, unable to tell kindness from his captor. Animals are simpler to understand than people, for Charles, and Arthur has much the same instincts. Survival is the clockwork that keeps him going. Survival of himself, and of his family most importantly, no matter if the path there is unkind, or even immoral. If he steps on someone else to keep his people safe, Arthur sees it as justified. Regrettable maybe, but just another regret in a world full of them. A raindrop in an ocean. What’s one more bad deed amidst the tidal wave of bad that fills his life.

It’s obvious enough to anyone paying attention; anyone who’s taken more than a fleeting glance at Arthur. Easy for Charles to rationalise in himself, even if his own sense of morality is different. Barbs are digging into Arthur’s flesh, and Charles has pulled him in the opposite direction, away from the only path he knows how to follow, forcing the metal to slice further under his skin. A biting muzzle. It’s no surprise when he fights against it.

Self-hatred lives in Arthur like a stray dog hides in a cellar. 

Charles has pressed him into kindness he sees as pointless, into mercy he doesn’t feel worthy of giving, away from the doctrine Dutch has used to cobble together Arthur’s worldview under his approving eye, and the conflict it creates in him is so unwieldy that Arthur can’t carry it. Anger is easier to arm himself with, to paper over the cracks made by fear, and doubt. So he lashes out at his surroundings, snaps his jaws. Snarls.

Fights because he’s caged, because he’s angry, because he has no control over the downward mudslide Dutch is intent on riding out and has no frame of reference for feeling so uneasy. Because he’s afraid.

Charles isn’t sure Arthur is _allowed_ to be afraid.

It’s not complex when he pulls the threads apart, yet the tangle eating at his insides doesn’t lessen, insecure and anxious.

He doesn’t _know_ Arthur.

It looms, threatening and icy cold; the needling realisation that perhaps he doesn’t know Arthur at all, doesn’t know more than Arthur has shown him, doesn’t know anything other than what he has permission to see. Twenty years alone, and some small, lonely part of Charles has dared to start hoping, start wondering. About friends. The future.

He’s only been with Dutch’s gang since the previous winter. Just another outcast, collected into the herd. Maybe he was stupid to think he could ever get to know Arthur. Maybe he had imagined everything, the bond growing between them. Maybe the way Arthur looked at him sometimes, with his rare lopsided smile, maybe it was the way he looked at everyone. 

What if this, the final firm push, is Arthur’s way of putting it to rest, telling him in no uncertainty that he doesn’t _want_ Charles’ friendship. That he doesn’t want Charles’ meddling. That Charles is foolish to have ever seen anything but ugliness in him.

Rationale then tells him he’s overreacting. Of course he is.

Arthur is a good man. Arthur is just frustrated with the situation. Arthur is not heartless. Not cold. He’s seen Arthur’s kindness, his quiet intelligence, his gentle heart. Just that morning, he saw him promise to find a new necklace for Tilly, to replace the one she’d lost in Blackwater. He’s seen him sit in thickets of meadowgrass and sketch wildflowers, touching them with gentle fingers as though they were made of glass, crease between his eyebrows as he tries to get the petals right. Seen the farrier’s dog in Valentine run barking up to greet him, and Arthur hop down from his horse just to say hello, to rub the dog’s ears, let it lick his chin with a wrinkled nose and bashful laugh.

It wasn’t just his imagination. It wasn’t just some sad old fool’s wishful thinking. 

Was it?

He swallows. Raindrops drip from his nose.

Taima jogs through another wet field, brushing past endless clusters of tiny white flowers, thatched clover and dandelions, untouched by grazing livestock and left to grow wild. The field then disappears down a small drop, a miniature cliff before the water where the grass abruptly stops and sand stretches out beyond, a wide beach curving along the edge of the lake, hugging its shore in a great half moon.

There’s a structure on the northern side of the lake, just visible through the rain, but the tracks loop to the south, following the water, and Taima trudges on, faithfully patient despite the weather. Magpie splashes behind, tide pulling some of the mud from her sodden hocks, white coat brown. Eventually, Charles glances back, forces himself to speak. “Tracks follow the shore here.” He doesn’t get an answer.

The trail pulls away from the water after another few silent miles, sloping up back into the grass. Woods line the lake from there, a rich green border hugging the inlets and outcrops, jagged rocks extending out onto the beach. Cutting in from the main road is a dirt track that winds through the trees, and Charles frowns as he reads the ground beneath them, follows the hoofprints deeper into the woods.

Air is thick amongst the trees, still and humid, rain barely breaking through the canopy above. Drops fall heavily from low branches, a constant murmur and activity rustling the undergrowth, busy with small animals sheltering close to the ground, Taima startling some squirrels as they jog past.

They ride through the dark, sparse light dappled beneath the horses’ hooves, and finally see the break in the trees, grey sky ahead, spray blowing in under the canopy. The trail opens to the air and the rain, curving back towards the water.

“There’s a camp,” Charles says quietly, and slows Taima to trot alongside Magpie, a cluster of small tents visible in a wide clearing, dotted with several trees before sloping away to the shoreline.

“Be careful,” Arthur says, softer this time, genuine, and Charles glances across at him, catching his eyes for just a second.

The site seems deserted as they approach and dismount, a simple collection of tents and a wagon spread out beneath the ancient boughs of a huge oak tree, dripping rainwater from every leaf. Arthur shoulders his repeater from Magpie’s saddle, and together they advance on the camp, quiet. Listening.

“Where is this guy,” Arthur mumbles, more to himself than Charles.

“Don’t know, but you know something?” Looking around the clearing, Charles frowns into the rain. “This is a far better camp spot than back there. Much easier to defend.”

A strangled wail distracts them both, and sets them hurrying across the camp towards the source. Beside some crates, there’s a man on the ground, flopping like a fish on dry land, hogtied and doing his best to yell despite the gag in his mouth.

“Looks like our feller,” Arthur says grimly, crouching beside the thrashing man. He’s blonde, just like the other Germans were.

“Good,” Charles says, facing the openness of the clearing, back to the lake, frowning. Listening still. “Let’s free him and get out of here.”

As soon as he says it, there’s a gunshot, exploding another nearby supply crate. Wood shrapnel bursts outwards and Charles scrambles for cover. The tied man is shouting the second his gag is cut, desperate even if he can’t be understood by either of them, Arthur hauling him out of the firing line to shield him behind the crate.

Another shot. Arthur ducks, yells for Charles to get down, flattens himself behind some barrels as more shots crack over the droning rain.

“Three coming at us!” Charles yells, revolver already smoking. 

Repeater kicking into his shoulder, Arthur clenches his teeth, pain twisting in his arm from the earlier graze he’d forgotten about completely. He levers the bolt, takes aim again. One man drops. A shot thunks into the barrel he’s crouched behind. “Why the _hell_ you drag us into this Charles?!” 

Charles takes out another, bullet through his head.

The third man trips in the wet grass, clutches his gun to his chest as he crawls behind one of the tents. He peeks out, and Arthur kills him.

“That all of ‘em?”

“Doesn’t look like it!”

Magpie comes bolting past the camp in a streak of white, chased by shooting riders from the trees. Arthur throws his hands after her, roaring above the rain, yelling for her to flee. “Go on girl, run! Git!” 

Ducking to new cover, Charles picks off one of the riders. The man cartwheels sideways from his horse like a sack of potatoes, and into the galloping hooves of his friend’s, tripping the horse and throwing the next rider. 

Somehow the downed man scrambles upright, fumbles with his rifle and starts to shoot, before Arthur’s next bullet finds his neck and he collapses backwards in a spurt of artery red.

Another sprints to the camp after his horse rears and flees, using the centre tree as cover to take shots. They clap past Arthur’s ears, whip sharp.

The man darts out in a blind run. Scurrying like a chased rabbit, blind to where he’s running, he meets Taima’s hooves as she kicks out mid-stride, cutting in front of him, following Magpie. With a wet crunch, he snaps back into the tree trunk, and doesn’t get up.

Two left.

Arthur hits another as he tries to dismount, falling backwards off his horse, and the last man then starts to turn, horse skidding on the sodden ground as he pulls her back and around, foam flying from her bit. “Last one’s makin’ a run for it!” Arthur shouts, and sees Charles stand in his peripheral vision, brave or reckless or both, taking better aim.

The man sprawls forward out of the saddle with one echoing bang, and disappears back into the trees, dragged at the stirrup by his galloping horse.

Silence, then. Only the rain continues, gunpowder smoke on the air. Both of them are breathing heavily, Arthur cautiously getting to his feet, swinging his repeater over his shoulder. Charles looks across at him, reloading his revolver before holstering it at his thigh.

There’s an unintelligible plea from behind, and Arthur had almost forgotten about the hogtied German, sighing as he makes his way to him again, crouching to cut through his bonds. “I’ll...see what they’ve left behind for us,” Charles says across from him, wiping his face on his sleeve and moving away.

Meagre supplies litter the camp, cans of food, ammunition. Anything perishable has mostly been ruined by the rain, but Charles picks up some cans, some dry ammunition from a lockbox, a pack of cigarettes buried in one of the tents, a few towels amidst the bedding and blankets. It’s pointless with the rain still falling but he roughly dries his hair, his face, rubbing his hands on the towel.

Arthur is attempting to talk to the German man across the camp, in the too-loud tone of a stereotypical American who doesn’t know how to communicate without English, complete with much gesturing and hand signals. 

Whistling for the horses, Charles watches Arthur again, anxiety still nagging at him. His personality is like an iceberg. Only the craggy tip is shown above the water’s surface, easily revealed to strangers, while the remaining seven eighths travel along unseen, invisible to everyone but those that risk getting close enough, to know the truth and potentially drown.

Maybe he doesn’t know Arthur. But he wants to. He wants to see all of him, the anger and fear, as well as the artist, the shy and soft heart, the hopeless romantic stumbling over his own feet just to talk with Charles. The selfish brute, the violent killer, the reluctant poet. The young child’s uncle, hugging Jack close and taking him fishing. Animal lover, brother, fool, and flirt. He wants that. Wants to know all of him. God, but he _wants_.

Taima approaches Charles’ reassuring voice, takes comfort in his hands when he rubs her neck, lets her nose in his wet shoulder. She’s only a little unsettled, as is Magpie, following her like a shadow. Or a ghost, with Magpie’s colouring.

Arthur’s attention leaves the German as Magpie comes close, and he stands immediately - “Just wait there a second,” - face soon buried in her neck as he talks to her, murmurs soft praise, tells her how brave she is. None of the words are meant to be heard, but Charles is close enough to accidentally eavesdrop, comforted just as Magpie is by Arthur’s gentle voice.

Proof to his deeply buried insecurity that he isn’t just anger. He isn’t cold, or uncaring. There’s love and softness and hope in him, no matter how much the world around them tries to crush it. Charles knows that. He’s experienced it.

“I uh… You reckon this spot’ll work for us?” Arthur asks, peering around Magpie to find Charles.

“Yeah,” Charles says from Taima’s side. “It’s...defensible, there’s good sightlines. Plenty of wood. A water source. Won’t have to trek down to the Dakota for fresh water every day.”

Nodding, Arthur scrubs a hand over his face. Tired. Impatience sits in dark circles under his eyes, but the tension is less at least. Less outward. “Right,” he says, absently patting Magpie’s neck. “You go find Dutch. Divert the caravan here.”

He nods again, more sure of himself with some kind of plan in place, then mutters, only just loud enough for Charles to hear, “Taima’s faster.”

It makes Charles huff, nowhere near a true laugh, but enough.

Picking himself up from the floor across from them, the German man observes with confused curiosity, understanding less than half the words spoken. There aren’t any injuries obvious, but he’s clearly shaken. Cold too.

As Arthur walks back to him, he ducks under one of the tents and pulls out a mostly dry animal hide, a sheep’s he reckons. He dusts it off with his hand, and hands it to the man, oblivious to his words of thanks while he wraps it over his shoulders, a cloak against the rain. 

Charles is watching again, conflicted by yet another act of selflessness, juxtaposed with how fiercely Arthur had protested to helping the man in the first place. Hesitating, he wipes his saddle with his sleeve before mounting Taima, lingering before he leaves.

“I’ll...clear this place. And I guess-” Arthur gestures vaguely, wearily. “Get this feller back to his woman.”

“Was machen wir jetzt?” the man asks, confused.

Blank, Arthur simply blinks at him, then turns back to Charles, starting to shrug off his jacket. The rain persists, but lighter than before, Arthur’s torn shirt darkening in spots. “You okay?” Frowning slightly, Charles looks down at Arthur, only soft concern in his voice. He’s handed the jacket.

“Take it, you’re soaked.”

“Then it ain’t gonna help much, genius.”

Arthur scowls at him, but it’s lost all the bite of before, more like the usual Arthur. Grumbling instead of growling. He shoves the jacket into Charles’ lap. “Just put it on and git going.”

Charles does. The jacket is warm with Arthur’s body heat, despite the dampness, thick with the smell of him, smoke and leather, Charles untucking his sodden hair from the collar, unable to resist breathing in, drinking deep. His lips pull slightly at the corners. Not a smile, but again, enough.

He rides out. For a moment, Arthur just watches, Taima’s spotted rump disappearing into the trees, and only then he turns to the German, wearily mounting Magpie. “Come on. I’ll take you back to your family,” he says, gesturing to the man to join him, and taking a second to roll up his wet shirt sleeves, tight around his wound from earlier.

“Also so ich mitkommen?” the man asks, careful as he touches Magpie’s flank. She shuffles, but lets him hop up behind her saddle, holding firmly to the cantle as she walks on, hurrying into a slow jog.

They retrace their previous steps, back into the treeline, following the shore along the lake. Breaking out of the woods, the sky seems clearer than before, the rain less heavy, Magpie picking up an easy canter, snorting every other breath. She’s tired, as Arthur is, but she can keep her pace for miles yet before it truly starts to affect her. Hopefully they’ll have a quieter day tomorrow.

The man speaks several times, but Arthur can’t understand a word, answering his questions with questions of his own in the vague attempt to communicate. He seems to know more English than Arthur knows German, and they establish money was the reason behind his kidnapping, but not much else.

Across the meadows, the rain clears up. Sun slowly starts to reappear above them, bravely breaking through the clouds, glittering off the wet grass. Arthur takes off his hat to let his face see the sun, feeling the returning heat on his shirt, on his damp jeans.

“Du bringst mich zu meiner Familie?” asks the man, over Arthur’s shoulder. Glancing back, Arthur frowns, thinking.

“Fam-i-lee-uh?” he parrots. Realises. “Family?”

“Ja, meiner Familie. Wie haben sie dich gefunden?”

“Look, I-I’m sorry friend, I can barely speak English,” Arthur says, huffing his guilt, taking jabs at himself as usual. “Your family’s back a ways. Dewberry Creek.” He gestures in the direction they’re riding, Magpie kicking up dirt as they cross wet fields and follow the road, passing the remains of a dilapidated farmstead. Broken fence posts litter a once-tilled meadow, overgrown and lost to nature.

It’s pretty enough, as the Heartlands are, clouds reflected in the puddles, raindrops sparkling on every flower. Rabbits emerge from their burrows, black tails bobbing amongst the ferns, and songbirds perch on the signposts, starting to sing again. Without the grey haze of rain, it’s easier to see the landscape, get his bearings. The railroad tracks loop past them to the east, deer dancing beneath the struts of a bridge, spanning the width of another dry river, telegraph poles like bare trees along the roads.

It isn’t far from Horseshoe, perhaps a handful of hours in total for him and Charles, so likely longer for the convoy of wagons. Not quite far enough to truly be any kind of escape, but maybe it will suffice for now. Until the next disaster.

They cut away from the road, across the green miles of another wide swathe of grassland, Magpie skipping past shrubs, currant plants and berry bushes. Arthur loses track of the distance, but as most journeys do, it seems quicker on the way back than on the way there.

Eventually the grass peters out in the distance, replaced by a sandy stretch of rock and rubble, the creek running deep down another shallow rise, at the foot of the steep cliff above, that they had ridden along that morning. Chunks of rock line the dry bed, hidden by huddled trees on the south side, guarding the gateway to New Hanover beyond. As they trail back along the bank, some muskrats shriek at the intrusion, and tumble down into the bowels where the rainwater still pools, making their escape across the silt.

It’s infinitely less depressing than it was in the rain, Arthur decides, but still an abysmal place for a camp. Micah is either monumentally more stupid than anyone could have imagined, or actively trying to get them all killed. Probably both.

“There they are,” Arthur says, finally spotting a wagon pulled up to the south bank of the creek, wheeled out of the tributary and waiting between the trees, two draught horses already harnessed and ready to go. Three shocks of blonde hair mill about it, making sure everything is packed.

“Na, Gott sei Dank!”

Magpie slows as they approach, and the man jumps down from her back as soon as he can, calling to his family, running through the puddles in the undergrowth with his arms open wide, like something from one of Mary-Beth’s romance novels. “Schatz!” he yells. Arthur assumes it’s some kind of pet name. It’s a terrible name for a person otherwise. 

“Andreas?”

The woman turns from the wagon, and her sudden joy is visible even from a distance, erupting across her face as she recognises her husband, hurrying to meet him in a desperate hug. She cries his name as if she can’t believe it’s him, kissing him, his face held in both her hands, thumbs smoothing over his cheekbones. “Andreas! Andreas!”

The children flock to their father too, grabbing for him, loud with elation, and he picks each of them up in turn to kiss their grinning faces, hold them to his heart and comfort them, stroke their hair.

Arthur lingers on the outside of the reunion. He dismounts and lurks just far enough away to still be there, shuffling his boot in the wet grass. It’s touching. Beautiful, really. Yet it isn’t for him. Even watching feels wrong somehow, as if he could dirty such a tender moment with his mere presence, could shatter the love they share just by looking. His own father was never glad to see him; perhaps glad when he died, because it absolved him of having to know anything about Arthur. This love is like nothing he’s ever seen before, indescribable, tangible, and it fills him with the sense that he is witnessing something not meant for him, something he will never experience for himself. The feeling sits uncomfortably in his gut, heavy as lead.

Tearful with relief, the family embraces, Andreas hugging his two children under each arm. They cling to his legs, as they had to their mother when Arthur had snapped at them, cowering from him.

He frowns, chews the inside of his lips. Guilt writhes in him like flies on meat.

“Wunderbar, meinen Kindern, meinen Lieblingen.”

Hands outstretched, Andreas’ wife finally turns to Arthur. Her fear forgotten, she is radiant with her happiness, fair and pink-cheeked, a soft round face, like stained glass angels in old churches. “Mein Herr! Sie sind ein großartiger Mann,” she says, clasping her hands in thanks or prayer, Arthur isn’t sure. “Ein wunderbarer Mann.”

“Wir sind gesegnet.”

“Ich kann von Glück sagen, dass ich Sie kennen gelernt habe.”

“Uh… Thanks?” Arthur says, rubbing at his neck. “I-I don’t… It was all Charles, I ain’t-”

“Vielen Dank, danke sehr.”

Danke. Sounds a little like ‘thank’.

“Y’all’re uh… You’re welcome, I guess?” Arthur tries, lips pulled up in a weak smile, scratching absently at his own wrist. He’s still covered in mud from the morning, caked into his skin despite the rain. What a sight. No wonder the children were afraid of him, even without his yelling. “Now, uh. Go on,” he says, and gestures at the huddled family to move. “Get outta here, this place ain’t safe. Go.”

They blink at him. “Get outta here!” Arthur barks, shooing them all with both arms. “Vamos! Git going.”

The man agrees, hurries to the front of the wagon, babbling away in his incomprehensible language, helping his wife climb up, then helping the children too. “Vamos,” Arthur says again, scuffing the grass with his heel. He needs a smoke. And a drink.

Hesitating, the man is speaking again, seemingly looking for something, fishing in the underbelly of the wagon, motioning for Arthur to pay attention. “Ein Moment!” he says, “Bitte-” and pulls a small block out from their supplies. 

It’s gold. A block of gold.

Staring, Arthur lets him press the bar into his hands, close his fingers around its weight. “Danke schön,” he says, making sure Arthur’s hands are folded around the gift, nodding, eyes wide and imploring, wet with tears. “Thank you.”

Still only able to stare, Arthur weakly shuts his mouth, trying several times to find appropriate words. The bar is heavy. It must be worth a fortune.

He looks up at the rest of the family, the tiny son who can’t be any older than Jack, the brave daughter with her straw pigtails, and their mother, holding them as though she can only breathe with them in her arms, beaming at the new sun above them, shining once again. Her husband has leant her the sheep skin Arthur gave him, tucked around her shoulders, her children cuddled into the soft fleece at either side.

The worth of one family. Whole again. How can a price be put on that?

“Vielen Dank,” the husband says, lightly touching Arthur’s arm before backing away, as if concerned Arthur might bite his hand off. “Herzlichen Dank.”

He turns away with one last watery smile, clambering up onto the wagon to take the reins. Watching, adjusting the gold bar in his hands, Arthur stands awkwardly in the grass, and mumbles, “Dank to you too.” He thumbs over a stamp inlaid in the ingot. “Guess it was a pleasure.”

“Yah!” The wagon creaks as it starts to move, horses snorting, and Arthur continues to watch, unsure what to do with himself. Before they crest the hill between the trees, the woman looks behind them, calls what sounds like a goodbye, and Arthur waves to her without thinking about it, just as surprised when she waves back.

A pleasure. To help a stranger.

He lingers by the creek for a while afterwards, catching a moment of rest in a frankly terrible day. Magpie wanders close, nibbling at the grass around the base of a willow tree, and Arthur smokes beneath its boughs as the sun drifts westwards, finally heading back to the new campsite as evening starts to draw in, work not over yet.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A moment passes, and then he blinks, snaps to look at Charles. “Wait this was s’posed to be an apology- Quit distractin’ me.” He waves his hands, gesturing at Charles like he’s cluttering up a space Arthur’s just tidied. “You an’ your...words.”

_Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine,_  
_if these conceal you from others or from yourself,  
_ _they do not conceal you from me_

 

Clemens Point is a beautiful spot.

The wagons ride in as the sun sets late in the evening, dusk falling in gently from the east. Golden twilight settles in the water, insects in the grass, dancing about the branches of the majestic oak in the centre of the clearing, fireflies in the lamplight. Flat Iron Lake is like liquid gold, the sunset reflected and rippling pink and orange, touched by skidding water beetles, the periscope heads of swimming snakes, the occasional flop and bubble of fish.

Arthur sits on the pier to watch the evening, his jeans rolled up around his calves so his feet can dangle in the water, only disturbed once the convoy of horses and wagons approaches, as the night does, Dutch announcing his presence to the world. He lingers as long as he can on the jetty, watching midges swirl and cloud on the water, his toes disappear in champagne gold.

He’d done as much as he could in the hours he had, dismantled the tents, set anything wet from the rain out in the sun to dry, cleared a spot and built a campfire. The bodies of the men he and Charles had shot were stripped of supplies and piled together, ready to bury when he had something other than his hands as a shovel.

It’s not a home yet, but he does what he can on his own. Grateful for the solitude, only Magpie keeping him company.

His earlier frustration weighs on him. As does the gold bar in his satchel. It wasn’t earned, not by him. Charles is the one that deserves it. Charles and his infinite capacity for selflessness, for goodness.

It’s late by the time the camp is finally more than a fire and some crates. Miss Grimshaw and Pearson set to work as soon as they arrive, directing the wagons, coordinating tents and supplies, collecting water for boiling. With so many pairs of hands, it’s lighter work than Arthur feared, and as midnight nears, the camp is quiet with earned sleep, with relief, only a few lulled voices still speaking around the campfire. After Magpie is settled for the night, her graze properly tended at last, he finds a moment for himself again, sketching the new site in his journal.

He writes too, and his train of thought inevitably turns to Charles. How he’d snapped at Arthur, but only when Arthur snapped first. It wasn’t the bright, rampaging fury of the moment with the bison poachers, more like the first time at Colter. Unwilling to allow Arthur to sink into easy wrongdoing, unable to let him get away with being selfish, and cold, as though Charles is so invested in Arthur’s goodness as a person that he refuses to even entertain Arthur’s behaviour to the contrary.

Charles knows him better.

Which is enough to twist and knot in Arthur’s stomach, pull anxiously inside him. A feeling of being exposed, of being _seen_ by another person, ugly and naked like a baby. He’d thrown that feeling back at Charles, pushed him forcefully away. The fear that Charles will not come back, and the knowledge that the only one to blame for it would be Arthur, sits uncomfortably in his gut.

He swallows, and looks up from his journal. The camp is only lit by the campfire. Shadows cast by the ancient oak splinter across the grass as though its roots are on the surface instead of underground, painted in black and flickering with the firelight. Only a few of them are still awake, the others having retreated to their half-unpacked wagons, their lean-tos and tents, the small safety they have to trust in, to keep them alive overnight.

He scans the darkness, hoping, and finds Charles’ lonely figure on the pier where Arthur had sat earlier, easily recognisable by how the light falls in sheets on his straight hair, the moon kisses his features in reflection on the lake. Anxiety clenches in him. A polite man would leave Charles to his solitude.

Looking down again, Arthur eyes the jacket that had reappeared at the end of his bed sometime that evening after he’d leant it to Charles before, neatly folded and dry of rain, and rereads what he’s written in his journal, setting the off-white pages in his lap.

_“Charles and I saved a family of Germans who were in the process of getting themselves killed.”_

He had paused then, reset his pencil on the page several times.

_“He’s a better man than me. He does not need to think to be good. It comes naturally to him, like right is deep within, as opposed to this conflict between good - evil that rages within me.”_

He sighs. Shuts the journal, puts it away in his satchel beside his cot. Perhaps a polite man would let Charles be, but then...Arthur has never considered himself much of a polite man.

Ignoring the insistent ache in his knees, his sore arm bandaged beneath a clean shirt, he makes his way across the sleeping camp, towards the water’s edge, where the grass falls away into loam and sand, waves caressing the shore. His boots crunch softly beneath him, leaving perfect imprints behind.

“Takin’ a break?” he says, pausing before he steps onto the jetty. Charles’ boots are neatly stood behind him, bare feet in the water.

He doesn’t turn at Arthur’s voice, hair loose around his shoulders, liquid moonlight. “Trying to.”

Deflating as if on cue, Arthur takes a step back, looking at the sand beneath his boots. “Sorry. I just… I won’t bother you then-”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Charles says, softer. He glances back, profile like sculpted marble in the cold light. “Sit. If you want.”

Arthur does, carefully walking the pier, and toeing off his boots before he sits down on the edge, stuffing his socks inside them so he can roll up his jeans and dip his feet in the water, the same as Charles, bare legs side by side.

The water is cool, but pleasant after the humid day and warm evening, rippling concentric circles around Arthur’s ankles that swallow all their twenty toes in blue-black ink, movement fading out into the hovering moonlight, blurred in its reflection. It’s beautiful. Serene, silent save for the hum and click of insects, the soft whisper of the water.

“It’s real nice here,” Arthur says, absent, still lost in his head. “You did good finding it.”

Charles says nothing. Silence isn’t uncomfortable, with him, just as valued in the conversation as speaking, but Arthur still feels unsettled, undeserving of Charles’ words even if he does talk, pressured to fill the gap between them, talkative with anxiety.

“I’m beat but… Feels like the wrong kinda tired to sleep, y’know?”

The gentle look Charles gives him tells Arthur his attempt at filling the silence is noticed, and unnecessary, like he can see through every ruse Arthur might try, every sleight-of-hand. Like he knows Arthur far better than Arthur knows himself.

“Mm,” Charles hums. “Me too.”

Arthur sighs, looks idly around for something else to say, another reason to hear Charles’ voice before he barrels into the real reason for bothering him, another excuse to see his eyes looking into his. “I uh… I noticed John ain’t with us,” he says, and Charles hears the question in it, accommodating as always.

“He said he was going back to the auction yard,” Charles says, voice as easy as the water lapping at their toes, expression unbothered by Arthur’s sudden frown. “Collect the money for those sheep.”

“Goddamnit-” His hand is brought up, fingers pressing at his eyes. “He’d be a damn idiot goin’ anywhere near that town right now!”

“He reckoned he’d be able to slip in and out.”

Arthur snorts, throwing his hands. Of course John would decide on something so stupid. Does he do it to purposefully stress Arthur out, or is that an added perk? 

“Oh, well... If it’s _John’s_ idea, it must be a good one,” he says, coated with sarcasm, letting his hands fall heavily on his knees. He shakes his head, an older brother perpetually scrambling after his younger sibling, fishing him down from too-tall trees the younger was desperate to climb and then got stuck in.

Charles looks at him then, at the forlorn slope in Arthur’s posture, like bare winter branches waiting for spring. Heavy with tension in his shoulders, as he had been earlier in the day, the weight of the world pushing him down. “What is it with you and him?”

It’s not the first time someone’s asked, nor the first time Charles has wondered in himself, but the first time Arthur considers answering truthfully, without deflection. The day has been miles too long, and he’s tired even beyond his usual inherent exhaustion with the world, but Arthur reckons Charles has put up with enough of his fussing today to be denied some kind of truth.

“He… He disappeared on us for a while,” Arthur says, quiet, comforted by Charles’ expression, honest and blank, withholding any judgement, but sincerely interested in what Arthur has to say. As always. “When Jack was real young. For a long while, more’n a year.”

“He did?”

Arthur hums, and starts picking the stitching on the inside seam of his jeans, thumb anxious as ever. “It was hard. Real hard. Abigail was...terrified, before, when she got pregnant, and John was never a decent man about it then or when the kid was born, but it was worse when he left. For her, with a tiny baby on her own. Still just a kid herself. No home, no money, no family.”

His breath comes out in a huff, only a vague attempt at a laugh. “Just us lowlifes.” He gestures at himself. Lets his hand fall back to his thigh again. “Hard for us too, him just...up and leavin’. With no word. Just took his shit and his horse and didn’t look back. Like we was nothin’.”

Charles looks back out at the lake, at the shifting moon in the water, disturbed only by the movement of their dangling feet, casting ripples out across the surface. Candor is taken as a gift, a show of trust that Arthur willingly offers to him, and Charles feels better. This Arthur is the man he’s more familiar with.

The stars are bright above as he watches, like the lights of far-off ships in the black sky sea, but Arthur’s honesty is more precious than even starlight. 

“We was...family, you know?” Arthur says, quiet again, only a suggestion of that particular hollow pain inside him and how deep the fissure runs, hidden from years of burial, but never truly gone. “Dutch picked him up when I was… Twenty-two? I think. He was just a kid. Ugly and bratty and bit you more’n he spoke to ya. Like a raccoon got his tail stepped on. Mouth like a wet panther. Never had a lick of brains in that greasy head.”

Charles smiles his barely noticeable smile, just a pull of his lips, able to pick the fondness out of Arthur’s voice. “But you was family,” he says gently, eyes turned back to him.

“Yeah. Mean li’l runt was...my brother. Since then. And I...looked out for him. Taught him letters and rifles and horses. Got him outta scrapes. Mopped up his bleedin’ and his cryin’ and his mess.”

He sighs, swallows the stop in his throat. Life had changed. Back then it all seemed so exciting, so fun. Skirting the fringes of society, helping folks that needed it. One big family. Together.

“Closest thing I ever had to a brother, anyways,” he adds, gaze lost in the seam he’s picking at, the brown thread against faded blue. “And I know he’s a shit. Dumbest fuckin’ shithead bastard I ever known. He treats that kid and Abigail like dirt, still, and it’s wrong.” He sighs again, looking out at the lake, as though it will absolve him of admitting all of this, like a sinner at confession. The moon simply stares back, swaying gently in the water. “But, he’s my bastard kid brother. And I guess...the leavin’? He didn’t- It was- I...I ain’t fully forgiven him for that.”

Arthur seems to slouch more when he stops talking, shoulders curled forward, head slightly bowed as he watches the water lap at his feet, watches the ripples he pushes outwards with his toes. His own skin, disappearing into the water, looks white as sour milk compared to Charles’, pallid and pasty in the moonlight, blotched with pink. His everything pales in comparison to Charles.

“Family’s important to you,” Charles says, low and soothing, like trying not to wake the world around them. As though speaking could shatter the glass lake, the fragile moonlight. Could shatter Arthur and his shy sincerity. “Loyalty.”

“Mm.”

Arthur hums, shrugs one shoulder and continues, “S’all I got. Loyalty to this… This. Whatever it is. Buncha criminals and lost kids, only together ‘cause we don’t fit nowhere else. Nearest thing to family I ever known.”

Looking at him again, Charles frowns. The sadness in Arthur is immeasurable sometimes. The loneliness. And yet Charles sees myriad beauties in him too, concealed amongst the trees, the snarling teeth, and the ancient instinct to survive, at any cost. “I respect that,” Charles says. And he does. “I didn’t always.”

Arthur meets his eyes, interested, and Charles continues, only when he thinks Arthur wants him to. “I always thought being alone kept me safe,” he says, briefly noticing Arthur’s thumb, finally still on the seam of his jeans. The water swirls around their feet, rippling circles melting into each other. “Being around others, opening up to them…”

“Dangerous?” Arthur says softly.

“Mhm. Literally. Could be killed. Worse.”

The loneliness in Arthur is recognisable, he supposes, because it mirrors his own. “I don’t truly belong anywhere. But having a family…” Charles looks over his shoulder, turned slightly to the camp now sprawling along the lake shore, the soft lanterns and light from the campfire, the buzz and chirp of tree crickets and cicadas, still awake despite the hour. “I see why it means so much to you,” he says, and turns back to look at Arthur.

A question hangs between them then, waiting. Arthur can hear it in his voice, see the words he needs to ask, but can’t quite feel enough breath in his lungs, can’t feel his tongue, his lips to form the words.

_What changed your mind?_

He stays quiet. Tucks the question away for another time, another warm evening, when it’s just him and Charles and whatever the nameless thing between them is, blooming like a rose in briars.

“I uh…” Arthur’s thumb starts moving again, picking. He looks out at the shivering moon on the water, and it highlights the dark circles under his eyes, the tiredness there. “I didn’t...interrupt your night just to talk about John, I- I owe you an apology. For earlier.”

An invisible hand clenches around Charles’ heart, and he looks at Arthur, unable not to admire the lines of his profile, the bump in his nose, the slight wave in his hair despite its fresh trim. His skin has been scrubbed clean of mud since he last looked at him that afternoon, the deep frown relaxed from his brow.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, glancing at Charles, but talking mostly to the lake, punctuating with his hand as though the words won’t come easily on their own. “I was...frustrated. With Valentine, with killing even more of them folks when I didn’t want to. With Dutch bein’ Dutch, and me goin’ along with it all the time. Bein’ a killer. Being no good. No matter how much I think I could just- Be _better_.”

He waves his hand, trying to churn up the words in his head, like a bird picking through dirt for worms. “You’re a better man than I could ever be. For you it’s...inside you. To do right. But for me, I-I don’t know if somethin’ got broken, inside, but… I ain’t so good at bein’ good. Doin’ right.”

Quiet for a moment, Charles watches Arthur’s expressive hands, and again wonders if perhaps he’ll ever get to hold one, map the lines with his thumb, fold Arthur’s fingers in his. He treasures whatever it is they have, friendship or something else, he doesn’t know, more than he dares to test its boundaries, risk losing it just to take Arthur’s hand with his own.

“Being good isn’t just something you are or are not,” he says, soft but sincere. “We all got good and bad in us.”

Like nature, he supposes. Beauty and cruelty both. Life and death. The world is a balance, and he’s always thought people were much the same, that same potential for both good and not. “It’s something you gotta choose. Over and over. Doing the good or right thing, even if it ain’t easy. Even if no one notices. You choose to do a good thing, and no matter how small...I think it creates more good.”

Arthur’s listening, Charles can tell, frowning slightly at the water, trying to order the thoughts in his head. For a second, Charles curls his fingers into themselves, swallows thickly. “You’re as good a man as I am, Arthur,” he says, and takes the leap, leaning over to touch Arthur’s hand.

They meet for just a moment, Charles’ hand draped across the wrist and back of Arthur’s, fingers squeezing, lingering in the gap between action and reaction, until he retreats, leaving only Arthur’s crooked smile behind.

“Yeah,” Arthur breathes, and stares, like the stars are in Charles’ eyes, and he can’t believe how lucky he is to see the heavens so close.

For once, he doesn’t argue the point, simply tips his chin down in a small nod. “Thanks.”

A moment passes, and then he blinks, snaps to look at Charles. “Wait this was s’posed to be an apology- Quit distractin’ me.” He waves his hands, gesturing at Charles like he’s cluttering up a space Arthur’s just tidied. “You an’ your...words.”

“Me and my _words_?” Charles parrots, unable to help his sudden laugh.

“Your words and your...face. Your… _You_.”

“What’s wrong with my face?” he asks, deadpan.

“Nothin’!” Arthur says, “It’s- Distracting, you’re just-” and has to break off into laughter too when Charles does. His smile is contagious. The genuine, bold smile. “See, now you’re doin’ it on purpose.”

“Distracting you with my face?”

“Yes! Quit it, let me say what I was gonna say before the sun rises, goddamnit-”

Charles raises his hands in surrender, biting his bottom lip to keep his smile under control. Arthur makes him laugh more than anyone. 

They’re both such fools.

Taking a breath, Arthur looks down at his lap, searching for the right words again, lost in their easy teasing. Words are always elusive. But this is important, and he wants it to be right. Especially for Charles. “I’m sorry. That I took that shit out on you,” he says, firm but quiet, crease appearing between his eyebrows. “It’s like you was sayin’. About opening up to people. And these folks is all I got, but I ain’t sure anyone here knows who I am, or wants to know. ‘Specially not me. Bits an’ pieces maybe.”

Again, Charles’ heart seems tight. Arthur’s voice is sweet music in the dark, low and labyrinthian, something he can so easily get lost in. What he’d said earlier replays in Charles’ head, how it had pulled at insecurity deep in Charles. But it seems impotent now, stripped of all its venom. In trying to hurt Charles, Arthur only tore himself down. Hurting himself in the attempt to ward others off, to push them away.

“But you- I don’t know,” Arthur says, looking for the answer in the lake. “I feel like- I ain’t never known who I am. But with you, its- Even though it ain’t easy...” He gestures. Such modest hands. Chewed cuticles. The ghosts of bruises still on his first knuckle. “You make me wanna find out.”

Charles heart flutters. He looks at Arthur, because it’s all he can think to do, studies the blue in his eyes, his fair eyelashes, his scarred skin. They’re definitely freckles, spattered across his cheeks, made darker with the arrival of the summer sun. Reflected in the stars above. Could he map the constellations in Arthur’s face? Trace them with his fingers, with his lips.

“You make me want to find out too,” Charles says, and it feels so close to a confession, just as deep in his breastbone. Makes his voice feel caught, like he’s whispered words full of some forgotten ancient power, not knowing what kind of entity he’s spoken into being.

Arthur smiles, relieved, and Charles smiles too. “Apology accepted,” he says, Arthur chuckling, pushing his hair back off his forehead.

“Oh, hey, those Germans- Gave me a gold bar for helpin’ ‘em,” Arthur says, his hair falling back immediately. “I couldn’t understand what they was sayin’, but they was pretty grateful.”

“I’m glad.”

“Well, I figure it’s your reward. It was you what helped ‘em. I was…”

“Being an ass.”

“Yep. That.”

“Well...donate it to the box, once Dutch sets it up. We can skip hunting for a few days and just buy some meat in instead.”

Arthur huffs another short laugh. “Could buy all the cattle in the county for one gold bar.”

“Let’s do it. Become ranchers. I heard you’re not a bad cowboy, despite the mess in Valentine.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Arthur says, smirking out at the lake. “I’d be a worse rancher than I am a dominoes player.”

They chuckle again, easy and comfortable. Silence hangs for a while, stretches out like the moonlight across the water, drifting, dreamlike. Only an owl cries overhead, silhouette stark against the bright moon. Charles glances at the hand resting on Arthur’s knee. As he watches, Arthur shifts, leaning his weight back behind him on both hands, flat on the pier.

It’d be easy to touch it again. He could mimic Arthur’s movement and rest his hand beside him, lean slightly back.

Arthur shifts again, and brings both hands to his lap. “I uh… It’s late, I’m gonna turn in,” he says, brushing his hair back again with his fingers. “Long day. Feels like I been awake for a year.”

“Mm.” Charles hums his agreement, peaceful.

As Arthur starts to clamber to his feet, he touches Charles’ knee, steadying his weight. They meet each other’s eyes for a long moment, Arthur’s fingers curled slightly around his kneecap. Charles stares, all his words lost, and then the touch is gone, Arthur’s wet feet standing on the pier, the hair on his legs slicked down by the water, running beneath the rolled cuffs of his jeans.

He wiggles his toes, and picks up his boots as he moves away, Charles looking up at him from his seat. “Thanks. Again,” Arthur says, looking momentarily down at his bare feet. “Night.”

“Get some rest.” Charles flicks his two finger salute, smiles as Arthur does the same in response. “Night,” he says softly.

He places his hand over the knee Arthur had touched, and watches Arthur head back through the firelit camp, carrying his boots in one hand like he’s sneaking home after a secret meeting with his lover. The thought makes Charles laugh again, just a short huff of breath, looking back out over the lake as the moon rolls between the stars.


End file.
